


The Correct Use Of The Timey Thing

by jonphaedrus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Consensual Underage Sex, Frottage, M/M, Praise Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9596579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: Dave blinked.John froze, his individual strands of hair floating just off his skin, the glint of his eyes stuck, almost like they were painted on. In the distance, coiling and roiling, despite the rest of the world being caught between one heartbeat and the next, the last few scuds of the thing John had destroyed boiled in the sky, a low buzzing drone filling the air. For a long moment, Dave didn’t dare move, unsure of  what he had done-was-doing-would-do. He’d never seen anything like this before, but he knew it was bad, especially since the thing kept coming, closer and closer, twisting sinuously through the air, defying gravity and frozen time alike. Dave moved without thinking, drawing his sword, the whole blade hot to the touch in his hand. Don’t you fucking dare, he thought. He knew that the thing was coming for John, straight for his heart, his weakness after using his power making him an easy target.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheVantass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVantass/gifts).



> commission + birthday gift = big homestuck fic. the only homestuck fic i shall ever provide.
> 
> prompt was king and lionheart au with handjobs, ear biting, and praise kink

There was like, at minimum, at least sixteen things wrong with this picture. At least. There were probably more but he couldn’t be fucked to count much past where he was at right now—mostly because he was already angry enough that counting was just gonna piss him off more.

“Okay,” Dave settled on, scowling and glad that his sunglasses hid his glower so that he didn’t get written up by his sister for being cross with the Heir or some such shit, “I get the shorts. I can even, if I stretch my patience to the end of its rope, get the lizard. But what’s with the spike moat?” _And why_ , he wanted to add, but didn’t, _are you doing this on the roof of the astronomy tower at half-past ass-early in the morning_?

“Oh, that’s easy!” John grinned as he said it. Dave hated John’s grins, because it made him look cute and innocent and well-meaning and not like a moron in only shorts on a rooftop with a lizard at three in the morning on a Wednesday. It’d be a lot easier if John was, actually, a well-meaning innocent and not. John. John’s smiles made him look like he had never been up to any mischief, ever, in his life, and how could you think something so unflattering about him? His smiles were very bad for Dave’s health. “I’m practicing,” John continued, balanced on one foot on the precarious edge of the shingles. “For whenever I need to go be a hero. I have to get the hand of this windy floaty thing sometime, after all.”

Dave _wasn’t_ a moron. He was safely on the ladder in the trap door that led up to the roof, and he was going to stay there, because he was smart enough to not test the universe’s goodwill. Unlike some people. “You can practice in the courtyard. There’s plenty of room for spikes and lizards and floating a _manageable distance_ above the ground.”

“Yeah, but then the danger won’t trigger it. Or something.” John jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Rose, who had carted a cushion and what looked like champagne up to the roof with her.

“You!” Dave pointed at his sister, who didn’t look up but _did_ arch an eyebrow at him. She turned the page of her book. “You’re the one egging him on!” She shrugged.

“Stars. Say he won’t die today. I think he’ll be fine. If you’re so worried, you get up here and drag him back down. _I’m_ here for work.” It was a meteor shower night, blasts of light above the cloud layer in streaks of red and orange and gold and white. She was, no doubt, taking down the omens. “It would be more dangerous for you, though.” Dave ignored her. John was levitating about a foot off of the roof as they spoke, holding the agitated lizard above his head.

“This is stupid!” John shouted, before he and the lizard both toppled sideways off of the astronomy tower roof.

Rose didn’t even blink an eye as Dave scrambled up onto the shingles and slid down to the edge, his heart in his throat as he stared out into thin air and the long drop to a hard stop at the bottom, above which John—and his lizard—were comfortably floating like they did it every day. John laughed as Dave put his head between his knees and tried to calm his racing heart.

“One of these days you’re gonna fucking kill me,” he gasped to John, who just laughed.

 

 

Dave could not remember a time when the castle hadn’t been empty. All their lives it had just been the four of them in the echoing stone halls and vaulted ceilings, learning what it all meant alone and without guidance. It was why Dave didn’t call John _Your Highness_ despite the fact that he was pretty much royalty—he wasn’t Prince because there wasn’t a King. He didn’t have a throne. He was just the Heir, and when he was ready, he would inherit it all. Everything. Whatever it was that all was; Dave still didn’t really know. It was Dave’s job to see that he got there—got to be ready. Didn’t die in some stupid way like testing the windy thing to see if he could do it whenever he wanted. Even if John insisted it was the right thing to do—that he just _knew_.

Yeah, and Dave just _knew_ that it was his job to make sure John didn’t die.

“I think you’re ready.” Jade was John’s sister, with his dark hair and too-fast smiles and little-soft-unintentional lies. Like Rose, she had, in Dave’s opinion, a little more magic than might be totally good for her. Where Rose had the wan sun in her eyes, Jade’s hair was the black cloth between the stars and planets.

“For what?” John gave her his full attention when he talked to her, something he _never_ did for Dave. It ground his gears something awful. “Another test?”

“Of sorts!” Jade’s laugh always put Dave on-edge. Something about it was _wrong_ in a way he’d never been able to name. It was like nails on a chalkboard but...more. Like mould you’d forgotten on fruit. “The clouds have come down from the North,” Jade explained, like that meant something. “You need to go get rid of them. It’s the Heir’s first test.” She came around her table, stacked with esoteric implements like squiddles, misplaced shoes, and what looked like at least one gun.

Very carefully, Jade held out a cape. It was the same blue as John’s eyes—the blue the sky was said to be in all of Jade’s old texts. The blue that it would be again, when John became Heir. John ducked his head as Jade clasped the cape around his neck, and pulled the hood up onto the back of his head. “Wear it with pride, baby brother,” she told him. “So that the Lizards you know who you are.” it was supposed to be solemn, probably, but all three of them giggled at it.

“Gotta do my best for the lizards,” John replied as Jade came over to Dave with a second cape, swinging it around his shoulders. It was the red of fresh-spilled blood and rust and his eyes. “Are we both going?” John asked, a little surprised, as Jade did up the cape around his neck.

“Duh?” Jade replied, sticking her tongue out at her brother. “What would be the point of Dave not going? He’s your _Knight_. Dumbass.” She ruffled John’s hair, and then stood back from Dave to look at her handiwork. “Someone has to protect you.” Dave had always just kind of assumed to himself that when it got time for John to be all properly Heir-y or whatever that he wouldn’t need Dave any more.

He was glad he’d been wrong.

“Here’s some food,” Jade said absently, cramming a picnic basket into John’s arms, “And a tent and sleeping bags,” these got passed to Dave, “And you have your weapons just in case?” They both nodded. Jade clapped, clearly pleased. “Sounds like you’re all ready, then!” Stars spangled like a cat’s cradle webbed between her fingers, and in the space between one breath and the next, as fast as a stuttered heartbeat, they were gone from the palace and home and all they’d ever known—and out into the wild.

The world was a big place, and one that, before now, neither of them had ever gone into.

“It goes on forever,” John said in awe. A glance revealed that he was hovering in his excitement, toes clearing the ground as his breeze whipped the windsock hood of his cape. Indeed, the skyline was vast compared to the stone walls, iron fates, and towering minarets of home. There were hills and mountains and trees and above them all a hanging cloud below the distant high-flung mist that, as always, blocked the better part of the sky. “We could get lost out here and _never_ find our way home.”

Dave had to be practical. _Someone_ had to be practical, and it sure as shooting wasn’t gonna be John head-in-the-clouds Egbert. “Yeah,” Dave pointed out, shouldering the tent and sleeping bags, “So let’s not do that, because we’d starve, and I for one like eating.” Dave grabbed John’s hood and towed the other boy along after him until John touched back down, sneakers crunching the gravel and shale of the ground beneath his feet.

“We need a better look at that,” John said as they walked, shading his eyes to stare up at the hanging cloud overhead. They were in the foothills of the nearby mountains, which were all stark, rocky, dark things, foreboding and rimed with black snow.

“Neither of us know how to rock climb.”

“Just up that big hill should be enough.” John pointed at one of the littler, more manageable mountains. Just a big hill. Dave grunted assent, and they walked and climbed in silence, John running off excitedly every once in a while and coming back with plants, or rocks, or a lizard. Or two lizards.

They camped for the night halfway up the rise John had picked, the stones of the ground not good for sleeping on, talking until they both fell asleep with their heads pillowed together. They rose with the grey misty light of dawn, and John elected to leave the tent and sleeping bags in case it took longer than he thought it would.

At midday, they finally crested the hill. Dave’s legs ached, and John was a little out of breath as they settled down on some grass and ate, the Heir staring out over the panorama that stretched around them out into the ar distance. “So what do you think it is?” Dave asked eventually through half a mouthful of apple juice, and got a noncommittal grunt in response.

“Dunno,” John replied. “It’s not a normal cloud. It’s too heavy. And it’s not precipitating.” Indeed, it was dry and clear, if not _sunny_. “It just looks...gosh, I dunno. Oily?” Dave turned to look behind them at the hulking mountains. The cloud was ominous and roiling over their peaks, their summits cut off from sight by its presence. “It must’ve come down from somewhere in there, but I don’t want to go poking at it without Jade.” Yeah; Dave was fully on board with that.

“So,” he prompted, “You wanna go get her and then come back?”

“Na,” John rubbed his nose. “I’m gonna try to blow it away. If it comes _back,_ then we bring Jade.” Seemed like a safe enough plan to Dave. “I mean, if this is supposed to be a test of me being the Heir and all, getting my sister to come deal with it does seem a little like cheating?” John shrugged one shoulder and turned back to the cloud. A gust of wind, his or natural, threw his dark hair over his face and made his hood whip in the breeze. “I’m still not _totally_ sure what I’m supposed to be doing here,” he confided to Dave, before he straight. “But I guess it’ll just...come to me?”

“You’re the Heir,” Dave shrugged, “Not me.” All Dave was good for was being a guard. He wasn’t like John, Heir to some great all-powerful creation that filled the world around them, the literal air they breathed. Nor was he the human form embodied by space and the physical mind-boggling actuality of their world, with the ability to call upon the land and stars alike. He couldn’t predict what was to come by closing his eyes and breathing in the fundamental stuff of the universe. Dave was just—

Dave.

Dave was Dave and could use a sword pretty well and was loyal as all hell but he wasn’t anything...great.

“Stand back,” John warned, and Dave backed up as John started to levitate, his hood whipping like a lash, dust devils forming around his white-and-blue sneakers. “I’m gonna try to bow it away!” He had to shout to make himself heard over the wind, but Dave got it and covered his face with his collar to protect his nose and mouth from debris, his sunglasses protecting his eyes.

The Heir breathed in, and with him the world breathed, the clouds quivering, the trees tilting toward him. The heavy monstrosity before them came only unwillingly, one little tendril stretched to John’s call at a time, like the fingers Dave had seen illustrated in Jade’s books for what a forming tornado looked like. The cloud came, inch at a time, across the wide bowl of the sky, until John had the full force of the Breath in his lungs. He breathed it back out, gusts and gale-force, and before him the sky turned upon its unwanted denizen, shredding the cloud to only wisps and shadow, back, back, over the mountains and into the far distance of the grey horizon.

It took three Breaths, but then it was done, and the pall that had hung over the landscape had lifted. Left behind it was the heavy, humid static of a storm. “I think,” John said, as he landed, looking pale and tired but euphoric in his triumph, his hair a mess, “That worked.” He put a hand over his brow as a visor, stared toward the mountains. “I think it’s gonna rain.” As John said it, Dave felt a tingle at the back of his neck, the hair there all on-end. Like lightning.

Dave blinked.

John froze, his individual strands of hair floating just off his skin, the glint of his eyes stuck, almost like they were painted on. In the distance, coiling and roiling, despite the rest of the world being caught between one heartbeat and the next, the last few scuds of the _thing_ John had destroyed boiled in the sky, a low buzzing drone filling the air. For a long moment, Dave didn’t dare move, unsure of what he had done-was-doing-would-do. He’d never seen anything like this before, but he knew it was bad, especially since the _thing_ kept coming, closer and closer, twisting sinuously through the air, defying gravity and frozen time alike. Dave moved without thinking, drawing his sword, the whole blade hot to the touch in his hand. _Don’t you fucking dare_ , he thought. He knew that the thing was coming for John, straight for his heart, his weakness after using his power making him an easy target.

But, it hadn’t counted on Dave, on dave sprinting forward, jumping into the air, teeth bared. On Dave, sword glowing in his grasp, cutting down to meet the _thing_ head-on, on Dave with the full force of his anger behind him.

His heart beat just once, and time started again.

“Shit—what the fuck!” John shouted in almost all one word behind Dave. The _thing_ that had come out of the cloud screamed like nails on a chalkboard and squealy dave hinges and pure, raw, unbridled fury and anguish as Dave’s sword cut right through it like a hot knife through butter, sharing it cleanly in twain. It dissipated with the creak and collapse of metal and the burn of ozone, boiling hot steam filling the air. It scalded his lungs, and Dave fell to the ground, coughing and covering his nose and throat with his cape as his eyes watered something awful. “Dave!”

John’s hands were on his shoulders, holding him up as Dave breathed clean air, coughing until his throat felt like he’d sandpapered it. “Hey,” John dragged him away from where he’d fallen, the ghostly remains of the _thing_ still steaming into nothing and smelling of burnt rubber. “What did you do? Where did that thing come from? _How_ did you do that?” Trust John to ask more questions than anyone ever had any answers for.

“I don’t know,” Dave wheezed to all three, taking his sunglasses off to wipe his running eyes, and kept them shut to avoid the glare from the still-wan sun. “It just _happened_.” He could feel John’s hands on his cheeks, holding his face, even if he couldn’t see the other boy.

“Well,” John said, “It was _awesome._ ” And then, John kissed him, holding his cheeks with Dave’s light-sensitive eyes shut against the overwhelming glare of light, smiling into John’s mouth.

 

 

They walked hand-in-hand back to the campsite, both of them bone-tired, taking twice the time that it had to climb up in the first place. There was no way that they were going to drag themselves back to the castle tonight, even with Jade’s magic able to whisk them away, and when they arrived at the tent they collapsed, sprawled boneless on top of one another half in their sleeping bags and half with their legs sticking out the door of the tent.

When Dave woke up, not even remembering having passed out, it was dark out, and John was sitting up, his phone illuminating his face. He was texting someone, probably, his glasses reflecting the white and yellow of pesterchum, and a stick of beef jerky was shoved half into his mouth. He didn’t notice Dave watching him for a long time, giggling over his texts, until Dave shifted slightly.

“What’d Jade say?” he mumbled, voice slurred with sleep and exhaustion from whatever had happened earlier. John jumped slightly, surprised, and looked down at him. For a moment, he didn’t do anything, and then shoved a little cardboard carton of apple juice and some beef jerky into Dave’s hands. He stared blearily at the offered food—this was in no way a sensible meal—and then, rather than question John’s totally incoherent eating habits, just sat up and opened the apple juice to drink.

“Na, she was just telling me this idea she had about her Squiddles,” John replied, locking his phone and shoving it into one of the pockets of his cloak. He pillowed his chin on his hand and looked at Dave, smiling. “I told her about what you did and she said that you saved my life.”

“No, duh?” Dave replied, snorting. “Even I could’ve told you that much, dumbass. Letting local heir, gets eaten by giant pollution-cloud-snake-monster thing is not how I want to go down in history as a Knight.” John snorted again. “I meant about my magic.”

“She says she’s gotta see it in person. Thought it was as rad as I did, though. I told you, you _had_ to have something!” Dave shrugged a shoulder, set aside the empty apple juice carton, and started eating the jerky. “You looked so cool doing it.”

“Is that why you...” Dave hesitated. The moment was over now; would John be embarrassed about having kissed him? He rubbed the back of his neck, under his hood. “I mean I get it if it was just a spur of the moment thing. Like, I know I wouldn’t do it, but like.”

John’s big blue eyes watched him, like the sky. Dave stared back, sweat prickling and beading at his hairline.

“Dave,” John said, “What are you even trying to say, because—“

“Like, do you wanna kiss me again, or not, because if not let’s just pretend that never happened, and move on, and like, if you do, I know I probably taste weird from eating but can you kiss me again, because that’d be cool—“ He was word vomiting, and John laughed in that way that made him seem innocent and perfect and Dave was so totally stupidly in love with him, then leaned forward, and kissed him hard. On the mouth. Even though Dave probably tasted like gross food, John did it anyway, and he ended up opening his lips in return before he’d even realised he was doing so.

His hands were in John’s hood, and it was really soft, and then they were in John’s _hair_ and that was even softer, and John was sort of kind of knocking him backwards, making him sprawl out over the floor of the tent.

There was a rock poking into the small of his back, and his shirt kept riding up, and Dave didn’t care at all. “Isn’t this a little fast?” He asked, dazed, as John straddled his lap, his buck teeth peeking out from under his top lip. “Shouldn’t we like, I dunno—“

“Who cares,” John replied, laughing, leaning over to kiss him again, Dave grabbing for his thighs, hips, the small of his back. “I mean, we’re only going to be stupid once, right?” And Dave could think of a lot of responses to that, because they were pretty stupid, all the time, always, and this was another kind of stupid, but—

John kind of, had their dicks bumping together, and it felt really good, and he kept biting at Dave’s lower lip, and Dave rolled up into him, not caring that they were both still fully dressed. “You were so cool out there,” John gasped, pinning him down by his shoulders. His glasses were fogging up a little and had slid most of the way down his nose, dangling off of the tip. “It was like.” He paused to grasp as they ground up into one another, his dark eyelashes fluttering. “You saved my life, and just—“

Dave shuddered, hard, all over, as John leaned down and bit at his earlobe, pressed their foreheads together, his glasses clanking against Dave’s. His eyes were so blue, Dave felt like he could drown in them.

“You did so good,” John gasped, grinning brilliant as the sun. “You did _so good_ , Dave. I loved it.”

Dave came, panting, biting his lower lip and whining low in his throat, twitching his hips up into John. He. Felt blasted-apart, and grabbed at the other boy, helplessly. “John,” he whined, and John shoved him down, ground hard against him until he trembled over the edge, cheeks flushed bright red.

Dave grabbed at him, wanting, and laughed out a wheeze. He just.

He didn’t even know any more, but he loved it.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus


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